not to think
about the issue (he’d have time later, once he’d gone out the office door), he
couldn’t help making a quick calculation related to the installments. It was a
calculation he made totally “in the air,” in the pure relativity of fantasy,
because he had still not asked for a single estimate from a printer; he had
planned to do so in a few days, but this now prevented him, or better said, it
gave him a good excuse to keep postponing it. Be that as it may, publishing was
very cheap, and compared with the business they conducted here, the cost was
marginal and insignificant. That’s how he liked to think of it: as if the
financial aspect could simply be canceled. This gave real meaning to his
publishing business. He realized, in that momentary fantasy, that he could
seriously consider things he had been placing in the “fantasy” category, like
hard covers made of cardboard wrapped in paper with a satin finish, and
full-color illustrations. The leap from the large to the small, from the fortune
of these magnates to his trivial dealings with some neighborhood print shop, was
so enormous that through it everything became possible: all luxuries, such as
folding pages, vegetable inks, transparencies inserted between the pages,
engravings . . . And it’s not as if he’d abstained from thinking about these
options: one could almost say he had done nothing but. But he had done so as an
impractical fantasy, even when he deigned to consider the most practical
details. Now, suddenly, reality was intervening, and it was as if he should
retrieve each and every dream, and every feature of every passage in every
dream, and rethink them. He couldn’t wait to be back in his house in Flores,
open his file of notes on the installments, reread them one by one, because
surely they would all appear marvelously new in the light of reality. He took a
taxi so he could get there more quickly. For once he allowed himself the luxury
of not responding to the taxi driver’s crude attempts to engage him in
conversation; he had too much to think about. Of course he still didn’t have the
money, and he had even rejected it outright. And what if these people, with the
insensitivity so typical of millionaires, had taken him literally? It was highly
probable, the most probable thing in the world. But it wouldn’t do him any good
to worry about it now.
That Sunday, at ten o’clock:
“Ding-a-ling-a-ling.”
A housemaid in uniform opened the door. It was an
enormous old palatial mansion in the Recoleta neighborhood. They ushered him
into a sitting room to one side, where he found the brothers and a woman in a
wheelchair, who was introduced as the mother. From the entryway, Dr. Aira had
caught a glimpse of dimly lit rooms, elegantly furnished, the walls covered with
paintings. This was the first time he’d entered such a distinguished house, and
he would have loved to explore it to his heart’s content, without rushing. But
this was not the time. Or maybe it was? While he was exchanging banal greetings,
he thought that in reality nobody was preventing him from doing just that, from
wandering calmly through all those rooms. Because none of them knew what his
method was; by definition they didn’t know what to expect, such as him telling
them that he needed everyone, including the servants, to leave the house so he
could remain alone with the patient for one or two hours. They would think he
was going to use some kind of invasive and potentially dangerous radiation; and
they would be in a hurry to leave, dragging the old woman out in her wheelchair;
and all of them would climb into their Mercedes Benzes and wait at one of the
brothers’ houses. Why would they care, anyway? And he would have the house all
to himself for that interval, as if he owned it; the possibility of slipping
some valuable object into his pocket occurred to him, but he dismissed it as a
too-sordid anticlimax.
Be that as it may, the interior of the
about the issue (he’d have time later, once he’d gone out the office door), he
couldn’t help making a quick calculation related to the installments. It was a
calculation he made totally “in the air,” in the pure relativity of fantasy,
because he had still not asked for a single estimate from a printer; he had
planned to do so in a few days, but this now prevented him, or better said, it
gave him a good excuse to keep postponing it. Be that as it may, publishing was
very cheap, and compared with the business they conducted here, the cost was
marginal and insignificant. That’s how he liked to think of it: as if the
financial aspect could simply be canceled. This gave real meaning to his
publishing business. He realized, in that momentary fantasy, that he could
seriously consider things he had been placing in the “fantasy” category, like
hard covers made of cardboard wrapped in paper with a satin finish, and
full-color illustrations. The leap from the large to the small, from the fortune
of these magnates to his trivial dealings with some neighborhood print shop, was
so enormous that through it everything became possible: all luxuries, such as
folding pages, vegetable inks, transparencies inserted between the pages,
engravings . . . And it’s not as if he’d abstained from thinking about these
options: one could almost say he had done nothing but. But he had done so as an
impractical fantasy, even when he deigned to consider the most practical
details. Now, suddenly, reality was intervening, and it was as if he should
retrieve each and every dream, and every feature of every passage in every
dream, and rethink them. He couldn’t wait to be back in his house in Flores,
open his file of notes on the installments, reread them one by one, because
surely they would all appear marvelously new in the light of reality. He took a
taxi so he could get there more quickly. For once he allowed himself the luxury
of not responding to the taxi driver’s crude attempts to engage him in
conversation; he had too much to think about. Of course he still didn’t have the
money, and he had even rejected it outright. And what if these people, with the
insensitivity so typical of millionaires, had taken him literally? It was highly
probable, the most probable thing in the world. But it wouldn’t do him any good
to worry about it now.
That Sunday, at ten o’clock:
“Ding-a-ling-a-ling.”
A housemaid in uniform opened the door. It was an
enormous old palatial mansion in the Recoleta neighborhood. They ushered him
into a sitting room to one side, where he found the brothers and a woman in a
wheelchair, who was introduced as the mother. From the entryway, Dr. Aira had
caught a glimpse of dimly lit rooms, elegantly furnished, the walls covered with
paintings. This was the first time he’d entered such a distinguished house, and
he would have loved to explore it to his heart’s content, without rushing. But
this was not the time. Or maybe it was? While he was exchanging banal greetings,
he thought that in reality nobody was preventing him from doing just that, from
wandering calmly through all those rooms. Because none of them knew what his
method was; by definition they didn’t know what to expect, such as him telling
them that he needed everyone, including the servants, to leave the house so he
could remain alone with the patient for one or two hours. They would think he
was going to use some kind of invasive and potentially dangerous radiation; and
they would be in a hurry to leave, dragging the old woman out in her wheelchair;
and all of them would climb into their Mercedes Benzes and wait at one of the
brothers’ houses. Why would they care, anyway? And he would have the house all
to himself for that interval, as if he owned it; the possibility of slipping
some valuable object into his pocket occurred to him, but he dismissed it as a
too-sordid anticlimax.
Be that as it may, the interior of the
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